n struggle for
independence have much of the daring, the splendid rashness, the
glorious and tragic catastrophes of the great romantic adventures of
the Old World. It is not the Texans only who still "remember the
Alamo," but when those brilliant and dramatic adventures of border
warfare became drawn into the larger struggle for the extension of
slavery, the poetic reaction began. The physical and moral pretence of
warfare, the cheap splendors of epaulets and feathers, shrivelled at
the single touch of the satire of the _Biglow Papers_. Lowell, writing
at that moment with the instinct and fervor of a prophet, brought the
whole vainglorious business back to the simple issue of right and
wrong:

"'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers
Make the thing a grain more right;
'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers
Will excuse ye in His sight;
Ef you take a sword an' dror it,
An' go stick a feller thru,
Guv'ment aint to answer for it,
God'll send the bill to you."

But far more interesting is the revelation of the American capacity for
romance which was made possible by the war between the States.
Stevenson's _Poems of American History_ and Stedman's _Anthology_ give
abundant illustration of almost every aspect of that epical struggle.
The South was in a romantic mood from the very beginning. The North
drifted into it after Sumter. I have already said that no one can
examine a collection of Civil War verse without being profoundly moved
by its evidence of American idealism. In specific phases of the
struggle, in connection with certain battle-fields and certain leaders
of both North and South, this idealism is heightened into pure romance,
so that even our novelists feel that they can give no adequate picture
of the war without using the colors of poetry. Most critics, no doubt,
agree in feeling that we are still too near to that epoch-making crisis
of our national existence to do it any justice in the terms of
literature. Perhaps we must wait for the perfected romance of the years
1861-65, until the men and the events of that struggle are as remote as
the heroes of Greece and Troy. Certainly no one can pass a final
judgment upon the verse occasioned by recent struggles in arms. Any one
who has studied the English poetry inspired by the South-African War
will be painfully conscious of the emotional and moral complexity of
all such issues, of the bitter injustice which poets, as well as other